On Nov. 6, Minnesota voters will decide whether marriage will be protected in our state Constitution as the union of one man and one woman. Opponents' reason for fundamentally redefining our bedrock social institution appears on yard signs that dot the metro area: "Don't limit the freedom to marry."

Now, Minnesotans are nice folks, and we don't like to think of ourselves as needlessly limiting another's freedom. The truth is, however, we "limit" marriage in a variety of ways. You can't marry your sister or your father. You can't marry a 12-year-old, or two people, or someone who's already married to someone else.

Why do we "limit" the freedom to marry this way? Is it because we harbor a dislike for sisters or 12-year-olds, or for folks who wish to express their love and commitment in groups of three?

Of course not. All social institutions have boundaries, or defining characteristics, that are integrally related to the function they perform. The vital role of marriage -- in all times and places--has been to link men to women and the children produced by their sexual union, in order to create the optimal environment for rearing the next generation.

It's misleading, then, to frame the debate over one-man/one-woman marriage in terms of "limiting" the "freedom" to marry of people in configurations that aren't consistent with the institution's mission. It's like claiming that the color blue is somehow "limited" because it's not the color purple.

The human race's two sexes -- male and female -- have much in common, but they also differ in fundamental ways. In the bearing and rearing of children, men and women complement one another physically, socially and emotionally. Women give birth to babies, and men beget them. Mothers tend to nurture, while fathers tend to encourage risk-taking.

. . . the notion of a unisex reality contradicts both our daily experience and the testimony of human history. That's why -- if same-sex marriage makes its way into law -- the strong arm of the state will be required to impose this counterintuitive vision on society.

The vital role of marriage -- in all times and places--has been to link men to women and the children produced by their sexual union, in order to create the optimal environment for rearing the next generation.

The slippery slope began with the acceptance of artificial birth control, first for laity, then for clergy *.

* In those denominations having a married prebyteriate, of course.

3
posted on 09/22/2012 6:48:16 PM PDT
by lightman
(Settling for the "lesser of two..." is still choosing Evil)

Strange huh. Gays claim that its all about consenting adults, with is ok until you get to the cases where Moms want to marry adult sons, or grandpas want to marry adult granddaughters, or the brother sister thing. I would suggest drawing the moral/legal line at unrelated men and women, but what do I know. Vote the Bible huh!

5
posted on 09/22/2012 6:57:15 PM PDT
by JohnD9207
(Mitt better grow a pair or this thing will be over soon.)

I’ve said this from the beginning. If you break down one wall, why not just break them all down? What makes a homosexual so much more entitled than a polygamist, or a zoophile? Shouldn’t they get “marriage equality” too? The reply I usually get is “No, that’s different. Those people aren’t normal”. And I say, “but, 50 years ago, gay people weren’t considered at all normal either. Who’s to say in fifty years we won’t be having polygamy pride rallies?”

Besides an occasional article by Jason Lewis, Katherine Kersten is the only writer with stones in the Red Star Tribunal. Funny how most of our butch leadership are women in this, the last stand of civilization.

I don’t think it will be long before two people, a 10 year old girl, and a 25 year old guy stand before a judge and declare their lover for each other. The judge then takes the enthralled-girl aside and she says the same.

...at that point the judge will have NO CHOICE but to approve the marriage.

That’s where this crap leads.

12
posted on 09/22/2012 7:26:21 PM PDT
by BobL
(You can live each day only once. You can waste a few, but don't waste too many.)

Foolish person. Freedom to marry for queers, freaks and perverts includes a wide variety and number of combinations from the animal world including 2 and 4 legged types from inside and outside the food chain.

15
posted on 09/22/2012 7:51:15 PM PDT
by RetiredTexasVet
(You can never blame a progressive for a failure .... it's always the fault of someone else.)

"I have been saddened when I think of our fellow Americans who are in incredibly committed interspecies relationships, who are building homes together, who are our neighbors and friends and who may be in our military, protecting the country, fighting on our behalf, yet have been constrained because of our bias and discrimination. It is time for us to put aside our antiquated notions and allow all of our citizens to enjoy the freedom to marry the life form they love and cherish."

Marriage is the carrot-and-stick to keep procreative couples together (lest the community be stuck with the offspring), which includes compelling the community to recognize and respect that union via providing privileged behavior.

Here is a piece on homosexual marriage from a reply from several years ago which I still like:

In the wake of the court decision declaring Californias plebiscite against gay marriage unconstitutional, it might be of interest to step back and look at the state of our jurisprudence and the state of our liberty.

In 2006 the Boston Catholic diocese suspended services for adoption because they were discriminating against homosexuals. In 2008 at New Mexico civil rights commission ruled that a professional photographer engaged in private business was guilty of sexual orientation discrimination for refusing to photograph a lesbian ceremony. In New Jersey the venerable Ocean Grove community has been compelled to permit homosexual weddings on its facilities because the state civil rights division so ruled.

One cannot survey the sweep of American history without understanding that race is the great issue for our nation. It has been called Americas original sin and one might say that with all the soaring rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson papered over that sin. We fought a Civil War over slavery and modified our Constitution with the Reconstruction amendments. We waged a battle over civil rights to end segregation and memorialized the vanquishing of Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Acts and in our court decisions. Out of these searing experiences came more than constitutional amendments, court decisions, and laws, we profoundly changed our culture.

The idea of racism has been institutionalized in our culture as something that is repugnant and utterly hateful. So it is not surprising that proponents of homosexual rights including homosexual marriage invoke the civil rights struggle at least by way of analogy. But these analogies are not the sole property of the homosexual side of the argument. The president of the National Organization for Marriage, sees a distinct danger to liberty from equating sexual preference with race, Maggie Gallagher has observed,

Once the law endorses this principle, traditional religious communities are going to be treated like racists if we act on and promote our countercultural view [that] theres something special about unions of husband and wife. Ocean Grove is the tip of a very large iceberg. Take it seriously.

Evidently, Maggie Gallagher knew what she was talking about because she was an original proponent of Californias Proposition Eight which the court has just struck down.

Why should the law have an interest in whether private enterprise provides separate but equal services to homosexuals? The answer is because the homosexual lobby has succeeded in writing statutes which prohibit discrimination against homosexuals. This sounds reasonable on its face, after all we prohibit discrimination based on sex, age, religion, ethnicity and race.

The rationale for these laws is that the discrimination is irrational as well as harmful. It is irrational because it assumes that every member of a class always behaves in a manner consistent with the stereotype of that class. Thus, if we fail to hire members of a given race because we think those people are shiftless, feckless, or dangerous, we might be right in our judgment as far as a statistical majority of that race is concerned. But the stereotype will never apply to 100% of the individuals in the race. There will always be individuals who break free of the stereotype, just as I intend someday to prove on the dance floor.

So from a sociologists or a statisticians point of view, discrimination based on race is irrational. But it might not be irrational from a business point of view. If, for example, an employer believes that one race that is statistically more prone to crime than another, an easy way to eliminate a source of employee crime is to avoid hiring individuals of that race. Its a very cheap screening process which, although not perfect, reduces risk at no apparent cost to the employer except perhaps in missed opportunity costs because he passed over a superior individual who performs counter to the stereotype. There may be other very rational reasons for employers to commit racial discrimination such as customer acceptance, and co-employee acceptance, to name a couple. But the law prohibits this kind of discrimination.

The law prohibits it ostensibly because politicians have calculated that the harm done to the individuals so stereotyped, whether rightly or wrongly, far outweighs any advantage devolving to employers who practice discrimination. This is a judgment call, a value call, made by politicians and imposed on society. The politicians have said: we arrogate unto ourselves the sole right to make this judgment and forbid you from making this very same judgment on penalty of criminal sanctions. We do not care whether your business sense tells you it is rational for you to discriminate based on race, we tell you that the societal cost is too high; our value trumps your value; nor do we care that we are depriving you of liberty when we deprive you of the right or power to discriminate; as a matter of fact, politicians will routinely say that there is no liberty to discriminate based on race because the act is so heinous. Again, this is a value judgment. When the emotion is wrung out of the issue, we must concede that the liberty of the employer is sacrificed to accommodate a more favored value.

Interestingly, the law permits one to discriminate based on race in the choice of a spouse. Evidently, society considers it a higher value to respect the liberty of the bigots who refuse an offer of marriage based solely on race than to require them to marry. On the other hand, the law has said that society may not prohibit miscegenation and must respect the liberty of people to marry who decline to discriminate against a suitor based on race. Not too many years ago the failure to discriminate was considered criminal by some jurisdictions. (Anti-miscegenation statutes overturned by the Supreme Court in Loving V. Virginia, 1967). So that which the employer may not do is absolutely ok for the lover to do, in fact, society may not interfere with the lover bent on doing that which is criminal if done by an employer. Clearly, the idea of legally prohibiting discrimination is a moving target as values shift up and down the scale depending on the circumstances and the ebb and flow of political correctness.

So I have lost my liberty as an employer to discriminate on the basis of race but in nearly the same time frame I have gained liberty to marry without being forced to discriminate on the basis of race. I have also retained a liberty to decline to marry because I choose to discriminate on the basis of race.

Well, this is certainly going to get complicated. First, it is not clear whether or not the law compels me to discriminate on the basis of sex when I marry. It has recently become more clear by virtue of the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that I have liberty to discriminate on the basis of sex about whom I might choose to (yuck) sodomize. In other words, the state cannot prohibit me from sodomizing someone of the same sex providing I do it in private (the old dont frighten the horses test). So in the ever cascading values game, I am at liberty to sodomize whom I please but in about 48 jurisdictions at my last count I am not at liberty to decline to discriminate in marriage against persons of my own gender. The law compels me to discriminate against them if I want to marry them but not if I just want to bugger them.

Evidently, the Supreme Court permits buggery in private because it places a high value in the right of privacy. The Supreme Court so far has not chosen to invalidate laws against homosexual marriage, presumably because it does not value the right of homosexual marriage as highly as it does the right to bugger in private.

But fixing on privacy as the key to understanding these distinctions comes a cropper if I try to invoke the doctrine to permit me to bugger either sex when the objects of my attention are underage. Apparently, the need to protect the underaged from my perversity is greater than the interest society has in safeguarding my right to sodomize in private.

In some places state law apparently has no interest if I choose to bugger a horse or even if I choose to be buggered by a horse. Other states are gravely concerned about my equine perversities, although it is not clear whether they are more concerned to protect me or the horse. It seems we cant get away from legislators preoccupation about frightening the horses.

Opponents of gay marriage have invoked the slippery slope argument saying that to permit me to marry my beloved (human) of the same sex opens the floodgates and would permit me to engage my sordid proclivities to engage in bestiality, polygamy and incest. Practices from which I am presently barred in most jurisdictions even if I am discreet enough to do it only in private. Slippery slope arguments rarely carry the day because it is human nature to worry about tomorrows problem tomorrow.

But lets turn the slippery slope argument around. When one moves control over homosexual marriage from the state to the federal justice system and one applies a federal constitutional rather than state legislative standard, one in effect is elevating a new interpretation of the federal Constitution over the plain and expressed will of the people of the state, in this case California. From time immemorial, the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, it has been the will of the people which has decided these issues. If one disenfranchises the state from prohibiting gay marriage because one has found a federal constitutional right to gay marriage, one has effectively eliminated the expressed democratic desire of the people to determine these matters. It says in effect that there is no rational basis to let the people decide the matter, it says there is a higher value, a federal constitutional value which incidentally we judges have just discovered, which trumps the democratic will.

So the slippery slope argument is not just a broadside which says if you permit gay marriage you cannot in reason prohibit polygamy, it is an argument which says that you have taken away the constitutional and legal foundation which from time immemorial vouchsafes the power and the responsibility to the people to regulate these matters to their satisfaction. If there is no rational justification for prohibiting gay marriage, as the District Court judge has found, it can no longer be a matter of legal logic to say that the people have retained their power to prohibit polygamy.

It becomes a matter of political correctness exercised from the federal level. If there is no rational basis to prohibit me from marrying my male friend, there is equally no rational basis from prohibiting me from marrying my male cousin, or, two or three of my male cousins, or my female cousins. Or, if youre concerned about DNA implications, there is no rational basis to prohibit me from marrying several of my male and female friends who are not related to me.

The law has put itself in the place where the judges insist that a newly found federal constitutional right to gay marriage is enough to overcome the will of the people concerning marriage but since we, the very same judges, have not discovered a concomitant federal constitutional right to commit polygamy, we shall suffer the will of the people on that issue to continue to prevail, at least until we discover that right - which might occur any day now.

The point of all this is not just to demonstrate that the law weighs one value against another and almost always prefers one value over another. The point is that to prefer one value over another is another way of saying that someone just got deprived of liberty. It is important that we do not let leftists change the subject. It may be perfectly good to deprive bigots of the right to discriminate but let not our indignation over discrimination based on race becloud our understanding that we are sacrificing liberty for some other value which might be very important to the person deprived. This can become significant when one takes the next step and deprives an innocent person who has not engaged in discrimination of equal opportunity to obtain jobs or academic placement. Liberals get away with depriving these innocents of the equal protection of laws because they have succeeded in shutting off the idea of liberty and the need always to preserve it.

It is not really fashionable today to talk about liberty. In fact, we have come to the place where it is politically incorrect to talk about liberty in the wrong context. When one considers, as I have tried to do, that political correctness can make for bad law it is almost impossible to describe the situation without being politically incorrect.

Steve Deace had another great reason for traditional marriage on his radio show last week. Having an institution and a biology that brings men and women together is vitally important to keep us united as a society. If men and women have no reason to “get together,” and can merely lead their lives with their own gender, that contributes to a divisive, us-vs.-them culture along gender lines. It’s self-segregation along gender lines.

Any Freepers who agree with JimRob on social and fiscal conservatism should be listening to Deace’s show. It’s the first conservative show I’ve heard that truly sticks to the true conservatism represented by JimRob, the same conservatism that led both to endorse Gingrich over Romney.

You also can’t marry inanimate objects, or animals, or trees. You can’t marry a variety of close family relationships. You can’t marry dead people. You can’t marry people that do not want to marry you, even if you want to marry them.

Their argument is all about “tolerance,” which is just as valid an argument to apply to incestuous relationships. And if they say incestuous relationships can have the negative effect of producing unhealthy children, ask them if homosexual incestuous marriages should be allowed then, where children can’t happen.

Marriage can’t be an example to children of how to live their lives if it’s changed to mean anything at all. How will you promote the idea of a man and a woman marrying each other and having children if marriage isn’t limited to that anymore? Changing the definition of marriage means you are saying society is not allowed to reward any different benefits or privileges or simply encourage a man and a woman who get married and have children. If you do that, you’re guilty of discrimination.

31
posted on 09/23/2012 1:22:46 AM PDT
by JediJones
(KARL ROVE: "And remember, this year, no one is seriously talking about ending abortion.")

Polygamy is a normal form of marriage. Its a good thing compared to homo marriage.

No, it's not. It creates a system of haves and have-nots. If that's the norm in a society, some men will have lots of wives and many others will not have one at all. Because of the nature of the genders, a woman marrying multiple husbands would be as rare as homosexuality is.

It would also seem likely that the children would be spending disproportionate time with the mother as compared to the father. Not to mention each wife would not be able to receive the same amount of attention from the husband as they would in a monogamous relationship. It doesn't sound like a healthy model at all. Sure you can find examples where everyone in such a relationship says it's okay, but you can find homosexuals who say the same thing. Even if it works in some odd cases, that doesn't mean it's the right model for society.

32
posted on 09/23/2012 1:30:17 AM PDT
by JediJones
(KARL ROVE: "And remember, this year, no one is seriously talking about ending abortion.")

Monogamy, polygeny and polyandry (i.e. women with more than one husband, a form found in the Himalayas) are the natural forms of marriage.

Homo “marriage” is nothing like those because it cannot fulfill the fundamental function of all marriage, the proper raising of children who REQUIRE a mother AND a father for proper development.

Monogamous marriage is the worldwide norm even in countries that allow polgamy and it is superior to the other two natural forms. As you say women and children get more attention from the father. While it's true that women in polygamous societies are second class citizens, children are properly raised, the societies themselves perpetuate themselves and are stable.

This is why I say Polygamy is a step up from Homo “marriage” because in no way can you connect the unnatural behavior of homosexuals in a “committed” relationship to real marriages of whatever kind. Destructive behavior doesn't cluster with normal constructive behavior no matter how much anyone may want it to.

Once a society abandons Christian morality, there is no logical moral criterion for any sexual activity other than consent. Not “consenting adult,” because that falls apart with the first hookup between teenagers. Not “informed consent”: they got rid of that in aid of the abortion license and organ donation.

Just “consent,” identified as the absence of immediate physical coercion.

34
posted on 09/23/2012 6:57:20 AM PDT
by Tax-chick
("In the kingdom of the blind, sight is a crime and mentioning what you see is a gaffe.")

Birth control within marriage has a lot to do with weakening the institution, but I think the biggest problem, at least in the modern era, is that many have been conditioned to think that marriage is defined by and comes from the state. One is married when the state says, no longer married when the state says, married again when the state says. How does the state decide who it considers to be married? Judges, pols or the majority decide. And that is it.

Once the law endorses this principle, traditional religious communities are going to be treated like racists if we act on and promote our countercultural view [that] theres something special about unions of husband and wife. Ocean Grove is the tip of a very large iceberg. Take it seriously.,

This has always been the homocult's destination. They never, ever intended, as they pled with crocodile sincerity in the 60's, merely to impetrate some modicum of toleration for their "lifestyle" (memo to Evan Wolfson: take your "essentialism" shtick and screw off).

No, it's always been about this, and about the actual destruction of the institution of marriage precisely because it is monumentally heteronormal.

They told us 25 years ago where they wanted their endpoint to come to rest (the ranting essay published in the Washington Guide), and Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile told us 20 years ago, that they meant to disestablish, and then destroy, marriage along the way.

When one considers, as I have tried to do, that political correctness can make for bad law it is almost impossible to describe the situation without being politically incorrect.

Orwell warned us in 1984 that it would come to that. He based his writing on political "truth" on what he saw the Communists doing in Spain (where he nearly died himself, and had to go into hiding in France).

The good news is, the truth will out, and in the end, the Orwellian project of thought control will fail, not because it must, but because of its own corrupt nature.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.